Pageants of despair

In some ways, this novel follows a well-worn formula for juvenile fiction, while in others it is strikingly unusual. The formula: an adolescent boy from the contermporary, workaday world is mysteriously transported to a strange world and winds up becoming an unlikely hero. In this case,a modern English boy is taken back to fourteenth century Yorkshire at the time that the Wakefield Cycle of mystery plays were being re-written by the man known today as the Master of Wakefield, who is disturbed that his new versions of the plays are having an alarming and inexplicable effect on the actors rehearsing them; this, along with some vivid, possibly prophetic dreams, has convinced the Master that only someone from the future world (as it show more happens, our protagonist, young Peter) can help him counteract the malevolent forces acting in his world.The treatment of this strange plot is oddly compelling, and strongly suggestive of both the potent effect that religious imagination once had on ordinary people and the extent to which the lack of such has impoverished and perhaps even endangered our modern world. Highly recommended for adults as well as young people. show less